What’s the British slang for penis? The woman in the wig wants to know. She’s addressing the audience. Come on now, don’t be shy. After all, we’re here to talk about Samuel Pepys and he certainly wasn’t – masturbation, constipation and defecation are all recorded in his diaries. Those chronicles of Pepys’s daily life form the basis for director Annie-B Parson’s 17c, opening the Dance Umbrella festival.
Dance Umbrella is 40 this year and on great form: still curious, still adventurous, still bringing over artists new to the UK, such as Parson’s New York troupe, Big Dance Theater. There’s less dance, more theatre in this show, as the multi-talented cast of five deliver slices of Pepys’s journal – alternately earnest, arch and sarcastic – then seamlessly mix in modern speech, video, song, and baroque-tinged dance. Especially good is the funny-boned Cynthia Hopkins (who does, in the end, learn a few new anatomical nouns), making Pepys’s thoughts sound like punchlines in a lame sitcom.
At its best, 17c is a pacy, postmodern mash-up of history and commentary. We meet two modern-day Pepysians vlogging about their idol, disturbed by the revelations he was, as they say, a bit handsy. The material is ripe for feminist revision: here’s Pepys regaling of his affair with his maid in a gossipy confessional, but what of his voiceless wife, Bess? This show shines a light on her, lonely and betrayed (although the choreography with which Bess gets to reveal her inner life is not hugely illuminating).
As Pepys gropes his way around London and assuages his guilt buying Bess new silks and lace, we see a pattern of serial adultery and control that starts to look distinctly unsavoury. Yes, yes, the standards of a different age – but also one more man whose legacy is tarred by sexual indiscretion. Can he absolve himself by justifying it on the page? Can we look past the behaviour of the man if we like his work?
This is a show that rollicks along until we hit the serious stuff, and it’s a shame the energy dissipates because it’s clever and entertaining. A very 21st-century take on a 17th-century life.
17c is at the Old Vic, London, until 29 September. Dance Umbrella continues until 21 October.
